Opened just in time for the upcoming centennial of the eponymous magazine that started it all, the brand new Poetry Foundation building brings founder Harriet Monroe’s long-elusive dream “to give to poetry her own place” into three-dimensional life. Primarily a headquarters for the staff of the foundation and magazine that have burgeoned since Ruth Lilly’s game-changing $100 million gift in 2002, the building invites the public into its handsome and quietly understated space with public events in a theater optimized for the human voice, a 30,000-volume poetry library and a graceful public garden. In a city too long associated with Capone, Ditka and Da Bears, there’s something, forgive us, poetic, about the soaring prominence of verse that this represents.
Fine Arts Building Staff Profile: Stationary Engineer on the Move The term “stationary engineer” goes back to the days when sawmills, power plants, and factories were powered by steam engines mounted to the floor. In the 1800s, before safety was standard, a boiler blew up somewhere in the United States every thirty-six hours.
Fine Arts Building Staff Profile: A Job with Ups and Downs Press the doorbell-style button to call an elevator—a pleasingly mechanical BRRING!—and you’ll hear a soft rattle of chains as the car descends from above. Step inside, and the operator closes the heavy outer door with a crisp BANG, then lowers the rod that locks it in place. The elevator men (they are all men) navigate not by pressing buttons but…
